October 2010

Last night in Dublin former US president Bill Clinton told an invited gathering of 575 of the richest 1% of Ireland's population that they were the greatest problem facing the world. They paid over 2500 a head to hear this as they chomped down on "Atlantic salmon, Connemara lamb and lemon posset, washed down with Chablis Domaine de la Mandeliere 2007 and Chateau Les Roches Gaby 2001."

Yesterday morning when news of the cement truck blocking the Dail gates broke politicians and possibly Gardai spun the story to make it sound as if this one man protest was a lot more dangerous then the reality. We were told Gardai had to jump out of the way of the truck and that it crashed into the gates. Now mobile phone footage showing the entire incident reveals that the truth was not being told about this one man protest by a minor developer.

Anglo Irish Bank Boss, Alan Dukes, called for the immediate imposition of a Water Tax on every household in the country, in an RTE interview at the weekend. Dukes enjoys a TDs pension of €45,500, a ministerial pension of €55,000 on top of his undisclosed salary of over €100,000 as bank boss. When asked recently would he give up these pensions in the countrys' interest as he has a extremely well paid job, he answered no.

The 1% Network has announced final details of the “Political Walking Tour through the Heartland of the Golden Circle” and has invited “anyone who cares about finding a just solution to the economic crisis” to “come and see how the 1% live.” The tour will set off from the Wolfe Tone monument, St. Stephens Green on Saturday next, 9th October, at 1p.m. and will take a route through Dublin 2 and 4 which, according to the 1% Network “are littered with the landmarks of power and wealth of the 1%”.

“There is a huge political choice facing every one of us…The wealth division in Ireland is obscene. It must be brought to an end.” – Gregor Kerr, WSM spokesperson Anarchist organisation Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) will participate in the 1% Network Walking Tour taking place on Saturday (9th October), leaving St. Stephens Green at 1p.m.

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), as we’ve been led to believe by those who support them, are ways in which public bodies can share the costs and risk involved in providing public infrastructure such as roads, schools etc. with private sector companies.

But in recent days it has emerged that PPPs entered into for the construction of the M3 motorway and the Limerick tunnel are set to land the taxpayer with a €100 million bill over the lifetime of the contracts.

Following on from the successful 1% Network walking tour of the golden circle in Dublin 2 & 4 we are going to have an Open meeting to discuss and plan for the next event which will take place around Halloween. Come along, contribute your ideas on the future development of the Network and help organise the next day out.

Leo Varadkar TD an influential Fine Gael politician has called for the implementation of the entire McCarthy report in the coming budget, the introduction of a water tax and the expanding the tax net to take money from low paid workers.

On three occasions in the last 6 weeks, over 3 million have marched against the government’s pension reforms in France, which are opposed by 70% of the population. The government, however, is determined to impose the changes. If we are to defeat the government and the architects behind these reforms, we will have to engage in real strike action. As the law is about to be passed in the Senate, renewed industrial action must be considered in all professional sectors. The renewal of the strike after October 12 is on the agenda in many areas: the railways, urban transport, chemical industries, ports, EDF, local authorities, education, culture and many more.

A couple of hundred people took part in the 1% Network's tour of the Golden Circle in Dublin 2 and 4 on Saturday. The tour visited the townhouses of Dermot Desmond, Johnny Ronan & Tony O'Reilly as well as the HQ of IBEC, the new Anglo Irish Bank HQ, the HQ of Treasury Holdings and some of the the private banks and clubs in the area.

A battle is brewing between IMPACT cabin crew members and the management of Aer Lingus. The cabin crew began a work-to-rule action yesterday against changes to rosters by the management which they see as going beyond what the “Greenfield” cost-saving plan had proposed. The IMPACT members will work on the old rosters, will not work on rest days, and will take all breaks and meals due to them. They will also decline to work the Washington/Madrid route. This route is voluntarily undertaken by cabin crew based in Ireland under Irish working conditions.

Videos from last Saturday's 1% Network walking tour though the Dublin of the 'Golden Circle' have begun to be released. The first video, by Dublin based videographer Dave Donnellan, shows highlights of the tour including snippets of the descriptions delivered at different points of the tour. We will be adding more video here as it becomes available.

A CSO report from 2009 revealed that Irish residents own 1251 billion euro worth of foreign stocks and bonds. Over 300 billion of this is invested in the US and 240 billion on Britain. These figures are for stocks and bonds only, they don't include other wealth that Irish residents hold abroad, for instance in the form of property. (Image: from the CSO report).

Like millions of others, I was absolutely delighted to see the trapped miners in the San José mine in Chile getting out alive from their stressful, claustrophobic confinement which they'd been in for almost 70 days as a result of negligence on the part of the mining companies. I could only be thrilled to see this terrible story of grief and suffering come to a happy ending and see tears exchanged for bursts of laughter. But at the same time, mixed with my joy at seeing these 33 condemned men return to life, I still had a feeling that was a mixture of revulsion and anger at the show put on by the very people who had dug what could have been these men's graves. I have no wish to be a killjoy, but when the natural euphoria that has engulfed the country calms down, a great many questions will need to be asked.

The Workers Solidarity Movement is very pleased to announce the second issue of The Irish Anarchist Review. This magazine is dedicated to understanding the contemporary political, economic and social situation that confronts us, and finding ways to advance alternatives.

Our first issue was released in the aftermath of major strikes across the public sector. Despite decades of partnership, a deflated union movement and an intense barrage of media bile, Irish workers showed their willingness to take to picket lines to fight the Government.

Now, however, we can see that the union leadership were not willing to fight - they quickly demobilised strike action to return to the bargaining table, squeezing out a disgraceful deal in Croke Park negotiations. Now, without opposition, the Government calmly talks of four-years of ‘hair-shirt’ budgets to restore the national finances.

On October 30 join the 1% Network for an after dark Halloween ramble around exclusive Shewsbury road where behind the high dark walls of their rambling mansions lie the zombie developers, vampire bankers and ghost estate creators of the long ago Celtic Tiger era sleeping on their piles of accumulated wealth. Shake with horror as you gaze at the AIB HQ and the black hole within that continues to suck billions of funding from hea...lth and education.

The first in a series of ‘Winter Talks’ organised by Solidarity Books in Cork took place last Tuesday night and was a big success. Donal O’Drisceoil, the historian from UCC, introduced the ‘forgotten’ figure of Tadhg Barry who, as he pointed out in his introduction, had the largest funeral ever in Cork when his body was returned to the city following his death in 1921; Barry had died in suspicious circumstances at the Ballykindlar internment camp in Co. Down shortly before the Treaty was signed.

Zombie developers….. Vampire bankers….. Ghost estate creators….. Black holes that swallow tens of billions of Euros…. They sound like characters from a particularly eerie Hallowe’en tale of horrors. However while they might be spooky, there’s nothing fictional about this array of characters. They stalked our land during the era of the recently-departed Celtic Tiger. But now they’ve gone to ground. They’ve disappeared, they would have us believe. And if they themselves haven’t actually physically disappeared, then their wealth most definitely has.

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